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Goldwater was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1909. At the time Arizona was still a territory and not a state. His father's family owned the largest department store in Phoenix called Goldwater's. Goldwater graduated from Staunton Military Academy and attended the University of Arizona. In 1930, Goldwater took over the family department store after his father's death. Four years later he married Margaret Johnson and would have four children with her over the course of their marriage. During World War Two, Goldwater received a reserve commission in the United States Army Air force. He stayed with the Air Force Reserve after the war and retired with the rank of Major General. While he was a Colonel, Goldwater founded the Arizona Air National Guard and he desegregated it two years before the rest of U.S. military desegregated. Goldwater was also an important figure in helping to create the United States Air Force Academy, with the current visiting center at the Academy named in his honor.

In 1949, Goldwater was elected to Phoenix City Council as part of a nonpartisan group of candidates who wanted to end widespread prostitution and gambling in Phoenix. In 1952, Goldwater won a senate seat as a Republican, defeat then Senate majority leader Ernest McFarland. While he was in the Senate, Goldwater became well-known for his anti-communism and push for labor union reform. In 1960, Goldwater wrote a book titled The Conscience of a Conservative which emphasized stopping the spread of Communism. In 1964, Goldwater stepped down from the Senate to run for President emphasizing state rights. He was the first Republican to win all of the Deep South states since Reconstruction. He ultimately lost the election due to his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as he felt it was unfair government intrusion into business practices, and also to an ad by the Johnson Campaign distorting Goldwater's views on nuclear weapons. Goldwater remained popular in Arizona, and was elected back to the Senate in 1968 against Carl Hayden. In the 1970s, Goldwater suggested the U.S. stop funding the United Nations as a protest to the new membership of China. He also played a role in the Panama Canal Treaty, that returned control of the canal zone to Panama. In 1986, a year before Goldwater's retirement, the Goldwater-Nichols Act was passed, making sweeping changes to the Department of Defense.

While retired, Barry Goldwater frequently spoke out against the religious right's growing influence on the Republican Party, claiming it was an encroachment on individual liberties. Goldwater was put at odds with social conservatives for his entire retired life. Goldwater died on May 29th 1998 in his home at Paradise Valley, Arizona.

A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.

I'm the most underdog underdog there is.

Most Americans have no real understanding of the operations of the international moneylenders... the accounts of the Federal Reserve have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and... manipulates the credit of the United States.

The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.